"Contentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suffered the same fate as many other words in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... I hope thou hast forgotten it as I have.' My poor father had forgotten and yearned to tell him so. 'I'm upon my death-bed and my consolation is the remembrance of our mutual faith plighted to each other a short time before our quarrel. 'Twas the bit of Scotch blood in thee that brought us to contentious wrangle. I 'minded thee at the time thou wouldst grieve for thy hot words, and 'tis a balm I send thee for thy grieved heart; 'tis my baby Kate'—Baby, baby of course I thought her so and sent her to a nurse's nookery at the top of the towers to silence the wench's ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... more indeed than they had read or were likely ever to read any other work of fiction; I doubt whether the house contained a printed volume, unless its head had had in hand a law-book or so: I to some extent recover Mr. Norcom as a lawyer who had come north on important, difficult business, on contentious, precarious grounds—a large bald political-looking man, very loose and ungirt, just as his wife was a desiccated, depressed lady who mystified me by always wearing her nightcap, a feebly-frilled ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and indeed the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation was on foot for its revision. The Boers considered, and with justice, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mrs. Transley arose, and the men moved out into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... prevent the harvest of one's actions. The Bible tells us that God will render to every man according to his deeds. "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil." How careful we should be of our actions in all departments of our ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... the one itself, always employing for this purpose steps of ascent, and at last beautifully ends in the nature of the good. Very different therefore is it from the merely logical method, which presides over the demonstrative phantasy, is of a secondary nature, and is alone pleased with contentious discussions. For the dialectic of Plato for the most part employs divisions and analyses as primary sciences, and as imitating the progression of beings from the one, and their conversion to it again. It likewise ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 'Midst a contentious world, striving where none ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... angry at small disappointments, incapable of forming any resolution or opinion abstracted from his own prejudices—he was proud of his birth, lavish in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who would allow his superiority in rank—contentious and quarrelsome with all that crossed his pretensions—kind to the poor, except when they plundered his game—a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, of so ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Atlantic and taking possession of the isles and coasts of the western seas, the Swedes were pushing their crafts across the Baltic and troubling the Slavonian tribes that dwelt upon the eastern shore of that sea. Either by right of conquest or through the invitation of the contentious Slavonian clans, the renowned Scandinavian chieftain Ruric acquired, in the year 862, kingly dignity, and became the founder of the first royal line of Russia, the successive kings of which family gradually ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in liquor is an irresponsible being, and Allyne, under the polish of education and training, possessed the nature of a bully—he was tyrannical and contentious. Choosing now to assume that Carnegie's partial turning away and low-voiced conversation were intended to insult him, he straightened up, and looking fiercely across the table, with eyes already watery from the heady fumes of the strong wine, tapped sharply with his glass ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... him going to Messina on some deputation that the Athenians wanted on some kind of matter of an intricate and contentious nature, that Phocion went with some story in his mouth to speak about. He was a man of few words—no unveracity; and after he had gone on telling the story a certain time there was one burst of interruption. One man interrupted with something he tried to answer, and ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... purring chuckle. "Ah, there we get upon contentious ground," he remarked. "Why should 'everybody' be supposed to know anything at all? What business is it of 'everybody's' to know things? The earth was just as round in the days when people supposed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth remains ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And it is no matter for surprise that various ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr. Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism: but the objects which he had ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the captain in command of the corps. To Gordon he seemed exactly like what Cicero must have been, loud, contentious, smashing down pasteboard castles with a terrific din. He was amazingly arrogant and conceited. In the pulpit and on the parade ground he was in his element. The School House had for years been notorious for their slackness on parade. In drill and musketry competitions they had invariably come out ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... our own historian. There can be no question but that Roger Williams—whether he was thirty-two years old, as Mr. Arnold thinks, or, as Dr. Palfrey judges, in his twenty-fifth year, when he landed here—was, in what we must call his youth, seeing that he lived to an advanced age, a heady and contentious theorizer. Our fathers could not try more than one theory at a time; and the theory they were bent upon testing naturally preceded, in the series of the world's progressive experiments, the more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... till spring was afterwards granted Williams, but he was admonished not to go about to draw others to his opinions. As Williams was one of those contentious people who must talk, this inhibition was futile. It is true that he no longer preached in his church, as the congregation had submitted to the will of those in power. But he conversed in private with some of his friends, and arranged a plan of establishing ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... facts of which neither now remains in ignorance. And no one, I think, could deny, at least no one who does not lack understanding, that it is only senseless men who choose to go on suffering indefinitely merely to satisfy the contentious spirit which moves them for the moment, and refuse to find a solution of the troubles which harass them. And whenever this situation arises, it is the duty of the commanders on both sides not to sacrifice the lives of their subjects to their own glory, but to choose the course ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... Chamber, as fearlessly as he always does when he is thinking of something else, I springing up to move one or two Chairs out of his Way. Hearing some high Voices in the Offices, he presently observed, "A contentious Woman is like a continuall Dropping. Shakspeare spoke well when he said that a sweet, low Voice is an excellent Thing in Woman. I wish you good Women would recollect that one Avenue of my Senses ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... stream! though now along thy shore, When spring returns in all her wonted pride, The distant pastoral pipe is heard no more;[9] Yet here while laverocks sing could I abide, Far from the stormy world's contentious roar, To muse upon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace to him? [11:15]but if a woman wears long hair it is her glory; for the hair is given her for a covering. [11:16]But if any one is disposed to be contentious, we have no such custom neither have ...
— The New Testament • Various
... opinion, it is our duty, when we have the desires of the people before us, to pursue them, not in the spirit of literal obedience, which may militate with their very principle,—much less to treat them with a peevish and contentious litigation, as if we were adverse parties in a suit. It would, Sir, be most dishonorable for a faithful representative of the Commons to take advantage of any inartificial expression of the people's wishes, in order to frustrate their attainment of what they have an undoubted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... make transcendence real and to reveal to men their consummate need of it when we speak of it in the language of experience and perception. What preaching should avoid is the abstractions of an archaic system of thought with all their provocative and contentious elements, the mingled dogmatism and incompleteness which any worked-out system contains. It is so foolish in the preacher to turn himself into a lay philosopher. Let him keep his insight clear, through moral discipline keep his intuitions high, his spirit ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... was before her again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning of the word) that she had felt at Plash—the way the genius of such an old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there, outside of the schoolroom, was contentious and impure. She had often been struck with it before—with that perfection of machinery which can still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately rhythm long after there is ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... searching eyes commended one part aboue another, to bee more beautifull: but my appetite rapt into an other part of her heauenly body, esteeming that aboue the other. And thus my insatiable and wanton eyes, were the euill beginning of all thys perturbing and contentious commotion, whome I founde the seminaries and moouers of all so great strife and trouble, in my wounded and festering heart. Through theyr contumacy, I was now brought from my selfe, and neuerthelesse, I could not be ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... for the most part latent, it fulfils this condition. It seems to order, but it never seems to struggle. It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious. The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... this commission, which was slightly different in character from that established in 1866, was as follows: (a) a first president of a court of appeal or a retired one, or a president of a section of the council of state or of cassation; (b) two general officers of the navy; (c) a member of the "contentious part'' of the diplomatic service; (d) two councillors of a court of appeal; (e) a captain of a port, with a commissary of the government and a secretary; five to be a quorum. There was no appeal; but the ordinary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... utensils for a year or two, and trust the result to "Yankee schools" and the industry of a then truly free and proverbially happy people. Some other system might be better; few could be more simple in the execution, and in my opinion better calculated to "save a race" now floating about in a contentious ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... words, "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and hell fire:" [3048]Vix a mansuetis, a contentiosis nunquam invenitur; scarce the meek, the contentious shall never find. If it be solid earth, 'tis the fountain of metals, waters, which by his innate temper turns air into water, which springs up in several chinks, to moisten the earth's superficies, and that in a tenfold proportion (as Aristotle holds) or else ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was ludicrously different. The object, as stated by the chairman, was "to avoid raising contentious issues in such a way as to divide the Convention on party lines,"[96] which, to say the least, was a curious method of handling the most contentious problem in British politics. A fine opportunity was offered to amateur constitution-mongers. Anyone ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... by the custom of your confession, That you never made any nuptial transgression, Since you were married to your wife, By household brawls, or contentious strife, Or otherwise, in bed or at board, Offended each other in deed or in word— Or since the parish clerk said Amen, Wish'd yourselves unmarried again; Or in a twelvemonth and a day, Repented not in thought, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... done with thy son, O king, that we have not done, to induce him to follow our doctrines and serve our gods? But, as I perceive, we aim at the impossible. By nature, or, it may be, by chance, he is contentious and implacable. Now, if it be thy purpose to deliver him to torture and punishment, thou shalt do contrary to nature, and be no more called a father; and thou shalt lose thy son, willing, as he is, to lay down his life for Christ his sake. This, then, alone remaineth: ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Neither did he try to boastingly minimize them as nothing at all—another wretched pose. From him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had made marked sacrifices ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the crowd, and hides herself in retirement, awaiting a better day; true learning is undervalued, and almost disappears from among men. It would seem, as though the wise men of old frowned in anger on the turbulence of the petty passions, and withdrew from the noisy and contentious haunts, where wisdom has no votaries, and tranquillity no followers. In the days of ancient liberty, the public places rung with the nervous eloquence of sublime philosophy; and the streets of Athens offered nothing more attractive than the keen discussions, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... properly afford the time for it, it seems hardly expedient that the immediate representative of the King-Emperor should be drawn into the arena of public controversies. Proceedings are bound to grow more and more contentious, and delicate questions of procedure will arise and have to be settled from the chair. These are all matters in which the Viceroy should not be committed to the premature exercise, on the spur of the moment, of his ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... There lives not such a fellow by bread as that old Lewis Baboon: he is the most cheating, contentious rogue upon the face of the earth. You must know, one day, as Nic. Frog and I were over a bottle making up an old quarrel, the old fellow would needs have us drink a bottle of his champagne, and so one after another, till ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... with a world not often over-nice Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice, Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride, Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame, And Emulation is its precious name. Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal Feel all the rage that female rivals feel; The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. The spirit of that competition burns With all varieties of ill by turns, Each vainly magnifies his own success, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... making just those mistakes, which a clever examination candidate would perpetrate, were he to be asked of a sudden to turn his studies to practical account. The very robustness of his sense of duty led him naturally to the two most contentious questions in the field—those which concerned the responsibility of the colonial executive government, and the place of party in dictating to the governor-general his policy and the use to be made ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... captious, caviling, carping, crabbed, contentious, cantankerous chap. Hoot mon! an' why shouldna I drap into Scotch gin I choose? An' I with ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... every allowance for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, I am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in Germany, or in the world. Luckily for himself, Albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, and travelled once at least far away from the harassing ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... doctrines in the Scriptures at variance with the principle that "God will render to every man according to his deeds,—that to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life; and that to them who are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, He will recompense indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish." Nay, the doctrines of Scripture are employed throughout as motives and inducements to righteousness. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... had controlled his men only by the force of his fierce will. Restlessness, little short of turbulence, had changed his six hundred from earnest recruits to bright-eyed, contentious, irresponsible enthusiasts whom only intimidation could manage. They seemed to be balanced, prepared, ready at the least whisper in the wind to scatter madly, each in his own direction, after a vagary, albeit ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... taking advantage of any public movement for overturning the present despotism, and recovering our liberties, civil and religious. We require to make the terms of admission strict, to guard against spies, and those who are contentious or quarrelsome. At the same time they declare the close and hallowed relations that bound them to all the true disciples of their common Lord. In a noble spirit of Christian brotherhood, they virtually proclaim, "On the communion of saints, let us impose no new restrictions. ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... is not to cut off debate (for which other motions are provided, see Sec. 37), but to enable the assembly to avoid altogether any question which it may deem irrelevant, unprofitable or contentious.* [In Congress, the introduction of such questions could be temporarily prevented by a majority vote under the 41st Rule of the House of Representatives, which is as follows: "Where any motion or proposition is made, the question, 'Will the House ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... contention and that of his family with the Archdeacon, the strong testimony that Cushman bears against him in his Dartmouth letter of August 17, and the fact that there seems to have been early dissatisfaction with him as "governor" on the ship, a very self-sufficient, somewhat arrogant, and decidedly contentious individual. His selection as treasurer seems to have been very unfortunate, as Bradford indicates that his accounts were in unsatisfactory shape, and that he had no means of his own, while his rather surprising ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... drink of sovereign grace. Devis['e]d by the gods for to assuage Heart's grief, and bitter gall away to chase Which stirs up anger and contentious rage; Instead thereof sweet peace and quietage It doth establish in the troubled mind ... And such as drink, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God; (6)who will render to every man according to his deeds; (7)to those who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; (8)but to those who are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, (9)tribulation and distress, upon every soul of man that works evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek; (10)but glory, and honor, and ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... devolved upon Andrew Johnson. This wrought an immense change in the aspect of national affairs. Lincoln was a strong, wise, conservative, magnanimous soul. Johnson was arrogant, vain, narrow, and contentious. Grant soon established his headquarters at the War Department, and devoted himself with characteristic energy to the work of discharging from the military service the great armies of volunteers no longer needed. Their work as soldiers was gloriously complete. Within a few months they were ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... it more fully later in this Epistle; he would have us duly thankful for this great grace and living among ourselves in a Christian and brotherly manner, in doctrine and practice, ignoring and avoiding that wild, disorderly conduct of the contentious and disorderly. He who recognizes such grace and blessing cannot but love and thank God and conduct himself aright toward his neighbor; and when he finds himself falling short in this he will, by admonition and the Word ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... devoted apes, base snites, Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns, Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons: Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts, Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants, Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls, Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls, Fomenters of divisions and debates, Elsewhere, not here, make sale ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... glory by the ill-fame of another, and to show off in company, like the doctors that perform wonderful cures in the theatres as an advertisement.[469] And independently of the insult, which ought not to be an element in any cure, we must remember that vice is contentious and obstinate. For it is not merely "love," as Euripides says, that "if checked becomes more vehement," but an unsparing rebuke before many people makes every infirmity and vice more impudent. As then Plato[470] urges old men who want to teach the young reverence to act reverently ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... held by the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, there was nourished and trained a keen, contentious spirit, and an unbridled license of tongue, of which the influence was speedily felt in the serious disturbance, first of domestic happiness, and then of the public peace. The matrons of Boston were transformed into ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... great part of the people, especially of workmen and servants, have lately died in the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages." A contemporary chronicler says that "laborers were so elated and contentious that they did not pay any attention to the command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire them he was bound to pay them what they asked, and so he had his choice either to lose his harvest and crops or give in to the proud and covetous ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... in December 1747, just a month after his second marriage, that Fielding again flung himself into the arena of contentious journalism, 'brandishing' his pen as truculently as ever on behalf of the Protestant and Hanoverian succession, and in despite of the Jacobite cause. He called his new paper "The Jacobite's Journal, by John Trott Plaid Esq're.," and the ironic title was accompanied by a woodcut traditionally ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... partial and contentious writing, sagacious men attained a reasonable judgment on the good and evil, the truth and error, of the Revolution. The view established by constitutional royalists, like Duvergier de Hauranne, and by men equidistant from royalist or republican exclusiveness, such as Tocqueville and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... management of horses, while sedulously seeking the full development of his bodily powers. Epaminondas was the example he set himself, and he came little behind that great warrior in activity, sagacity, and integrity, though he differed from him in being possessed of a hot, contentious temper, which often carried him beyond ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many lawsuits, many lawyers and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as [500]Plato long since maintained: for where such kind of men swarm, they will make more ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a better state of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They divide into parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time and exhaust their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are not anxious that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but they seek credit for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for the general welfare, are ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... with her that he should care so much what adventures she had had. He had never for a moment allowed he was in love with her; therefore nothing could have surprised him more than to discover he was jealous. What but jealousy could give a man that sore contentious wish for the detail of what would make him suffer? Well enough he knew indeed that he should never have it from the only person who to-day could give it to him. She let him press her with his sombre eyes, only smiling at him with an exquisite mercy and breathing equally little the word that ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... replied Colcord. "These little fellows are an unruly set, born of parents who have led rough lives,—here in battle time, too, with the spirit of battle in them,—therefore rude and contentious beyond my power to cope with them. I have been taught, long ago," he added, with a peaceful smile, "that my business in life does not lie with grown-up and consolidated men and women; and so, not to be useless ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... komunikebla. Contain enhavi. Contaminate malpurigi. Contemn malestimi. Contemplate rigardadi. Contemporary samtempa. Contempt malestimo. Contemptible malestima. Contend batali. Content kontentigi. Contentedness kontenteco. Contention kontrauxstaro. Contentious malpacula. Contentment kontenteco. Contents enhavo. Contest disputi. Contest disputo. Continence sindetenemo. Continent (geog.) kontinento. Contingent (milit.) kontingento. Contiguity apudeco. Contiguous ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... managing of the contentious quarrel between the two Irish earls did not make the way to cause these lines to pass my hand, this gibberish should hardly have cumbered your eyes; but warned by my former fault, and dreading worser hap to come, I rede you take good heed that the good subjects lost ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... to conciliate the good opinion of his vigilant neighbours. Their character for contentious orthodoxy was well known. It was at Neuchatel that the controversy as to the eternal punishment of the wicked raged with a fury that ended in a civil outbreak. The peace of the town was violently disturbed, ministers were suspended, magistrates were interdicted, life was lost, until at last ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... they do it under a pretence. As a scorner reproacheth under a pretence of sport, so they, under other pretences, of wrongs done, of the country's defence, &c. Verses 20, 24, show the way to prevent trouble and keep peace. As a contentious turbulent person would inflame a whole country and put them by the ears, so a person, though not contentious in his own nature, yet having many contentious interests following him, which he will not quit, or commit to God's providence, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... in my city-home, through letters from the minister and Colonel Prowley, I had been kept informed of the progress of that wild ferment going on in Foxden. At length the contentious spirit there evoked seemed ready to summon to trial all ancient and reputable things. My friends of the protesting minority were surely to be credited with good Puritan pluck; though there was also something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... By all obeyed thus, No storms, heats, colds, no soules contentious, Nor civill war is found; I ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Quakers, seem to have retained some of the contentious Cromwellian spirit of their youth. They soon quarreled over their respective interests in the ownership of West Jersey; and to prevent a lawsuit, so objectionable to Quakers, the decision was left to William Penn, then a rising young Quaker ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... the right to be Mayors and Provosts, Aldermen and Baillies, with the limitation that women appointed to an office carrying with it the right to be Justices of the Peace should be incapacitated from so acting. These Acts though non-contentious in the party sense required fourteen years' strenuous work to secure their adoption as Government measures. This was achieved during Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's premiership, the necessary legislation ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Gertie's immobility and Ruth's lightness. He was used to Gertie; was in her presence comfortably understanding and understood; could find whatever he expected in her as easily as one finds the editorial page—or the sporting page—in a familiar newspaper. He merely became mildly contentious and made questioning noises in his throat ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... fatigue, and that recently after his cold there were some days when his voice was little better than a very distinct, but also a very pathetic, whisper. But there is another side. Age has mellowed his style, so that now he can speak on even the most contentious subject with a gentleness and a freedom from anything like venom—with an elevation of tone—that make it almost impossible for even his bitterest opponent to listen to him without delight and, for the moment at least, with a certain degree of assent. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... we are assured of the gentleness of these proceedings is delightful. The recusants, with Sir John Everard at their head, departed we are further told "in most contentious manner" out of the House. Being asked why they did not return, they replied that "Those within the House are no House, and the Speaker is no Speaker; but we are the House, and Sir ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... my friends, employ, And lo! the gods conspire to crown our joy; See ready for the fight, and hand to hand, Yon surly mendicants contentious stand: Why urge we not to blows!" Well pleased they spring Swift from their seats, and thickening ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... my looks!" she snapped. "A lot of good they've done me." And, feeling contentious and sad, she got up and left the table. Cowperwood followed her after a time, only to see her dabbing at her eyes and nose with powder. A half-filled glass of whisky and water was on the dressing-table beside her. It gave him a strange ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... a spring of the foot into a triumph over them, she abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed the gate, put her toe upon his instep, and scrambled into the saddle behind him. The pair were speeding away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious revellers became ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... doing violence to my feelings,—submitting my will always to that of my superiors, never contentious, never sulky, finishing every work begun, in spite of dislike ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... the Canadian public excitedly interested in the discussion? Not at all. Spokesmen and penmen of the two contentious factions are victimized by their own perfervid imaginations. The electorate, the masses, are not so swayed. The Canadian people, essentially British no matter what their origins, are mainly, like all English-speaking democracies, of straight, primitive, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... together and make comparison of your opinions, that he may know the truth." To this I answered, "Blessed be God that hath put this in the heart of the khan; but our Scriptures command the servants of God not to be contentious, but meek unto all. Wherefore I am ready, without strife or contention, to render a true account of the faith and hope of the Christians to every one who may require to be informed." They wrote down my words and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... as to waste This Life disputing upon Taste; And most—let that sad Truth be written— In this contentious Land of Britain, Where each one holds "it seems to me" Equivalent to Q. E. D., And if you dare to doubt his Word Proclaims you Blockhead and absurd. And then, too often, the Debate Is not 'twixt First and Second-rate, Some narrow Issue, where a Touch Of more or less can't matter ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... waters; now they deep immerge "Their bodies in the hollow fen; now raise "Their heads, and skim the surface of the pool, "Often they rest upon the margin's brink, "And oft light-springing, in the cool lake plunge. "Now still their rude contentious tongues they use, "Still squabbling, lost to shame beneath the waves: "Beneath the waves they still abusings strive "To utter. Hoarsely still their voice is heard, "Through their wide-bloated throats. Their railing words, "Their jaws more wide dilate. Depriv'd of neck, "Their head and back in junction ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... about to open fire on him, but at that moment our hostess appeared on the staircase, summoned evidently by our high-pitched contentious voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for a dark wrapper, removed her ornaments and begun to disarrange her hair, a thick tress of which escaped from the comb. She hurried down with a pale questioning face. Feeling distinctly ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of 1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would have been ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... "you do wrong to your liberty by calling it so often in doubt, and in claiming with so much contentious anxiety from your enemies a title-deed for your independence. You hold it by your own public decree. In virtue of that decree, confirmed by the success of your arms, you have enjoyed it long. Nor could anything obtained from your enemies be of use ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he swore, The immortal seats should ne'er behold her more; And whirl'd her headlong down, for ever driven From bright Olympus and the starry heaven: Thence on the nether world the fury fell; Ordain'd with man's contentious race to dwell. Full oft the god his son's hard toils bemoan'd, Cursed the dire fury, and in secret groan'd.(258) Even thus, like Jove himself, was I misled, While raging Hector heap'd our camps with dead. What can the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... new hands to those passed through this discipline of suffering. Such as rose in society, were seldom really respectable; they neither regretted their crimes, nor offered atonement. But if the prisoner was injured, the colonist was not less so. Social virtues were discouraged; all classes were contentious and overbearing: the police, ever prying into the business of life, thus intermixed with penal systems, filled the colony with exasperation, from which not even the mildest spirits could escape. He ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... but this very dissension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are charged against His Church? It was precisely on this account that He was given into the hands of Pilate. He stirreth up the people. He makes Himself a King. He is a contentious demagogue, a disloyal citizen, a danger to ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... however, poor Job who fell in for the lion's share. Alas for him! He often found the words of Solomon to be true: "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman" (Prov. xxi. 19). As there was no wilderness into which he could fly to escape the tongue of his dear Jemima, he would fly away into a solitary room, or into the adjoining garden, or into a neighbour's house, or take a walk in the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... condition of religion which existed during the period of emancipation. No society can endure without vital religion, and any revolution effected at a time when religion is moribund or dissipated in contentious fragments, is destined to be evacuated of its ideals and its potential, and to end in disaster. Now the freeing of the slaves of the Renaissance and the post-Reformation, and their absorption in the body politic, was one of the greatest revolutions in history, and it came at a time ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... intention of interfering with the Little Sisters of the Poor, or any other persons, who collect the broken victuals of hotels and other establishments for charitable purposes. My object is not to poach on my neighbour's domains, nor shall I ever be a party to any contentious quarrels for the control of this or that source of supply. All that is already utilised I regard as outside my sphere. The unoccupied wilderness of waste is a wide enough area for the operations of our Brigade. But it will be found in practice that there are no ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his flight, Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy brow, Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn Yea, would I rode these mad contentious brawls, No damage taking from their If and How, Nor no result save ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... drop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about this, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words falling on his ear in ceaseless pelting—drop! drop! drop! and he seized his pen and wrote: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." If Solomon had been as prayerful at the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how much domestic infelicity ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... furnishes the central idea of the presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the first statement of that famous "Article X" of the Covenant of the League of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's most important contribution to that contentious document. This was the article which pledges the League "to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence" of all its members; it was the article which, more than any other, made the League obnoxious to Americans, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... fatherly sternness. "Has, then, misfortune," he cried, "not yet so bound us together, That we have finally learned to bear and forbear one another, Though each one, it may be, do not measure his share of the labor? He that is happy, forsooth, is contentious! Will sufferings never Teach you to cease from your brawls of old between brother and brother? Grudge not one to another a place on the soil of the stranger; Rather divide what ye have, as yourselves, ye would hope to ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... feeling himself out of accord with all his neighbors, saying a few loyal gentlemen like himself, is thinking much and seriously of selling our estate here and of moving away into the new countries of the West, where he will be free from all the disputation and contentious talk ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... theological subtilties, to think he meant to limit duty to the simple act of belief. From the period of their opposition to Dr. Beaumont, a marked change was visible in the manners of the villagers; their time was devoted to contentious disputation, which is in truth the most dangerous sort of idleness, and as they became in their own ideas more enlightened, they became more miserable; a sullen morose gloom usurped the frank hilarity of satisfied ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... almost unparallelled success. Twenty thousand copies were sold in the year after publication, and various editions are now in circulation. The saintliness of this broad-minded divine's character emerges unsullied from an age of contentious bigotry. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... could, and when tempted to answer her sharply, I made haste to smile and change the subject, for the Imitation says: "It is more profitable to leave everyone to his way of thinking than to give way to contentious discourses." And sometimes when the temptation was very severe, I would run like a deserter from the battlefield if I could do so without letting the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... probable that this was granted out of a particular respect, and to please Ajax, from whom this tribe received its name; for we know he could not endure to be outdone, but was easily hurried on to the greatest enormities by his contentious and passionate humor; and therefore to comply with him and afford him some comfort in his disasters, they secured him from the most vexing grievance that follows the misfortune of the conquered, by ordering that his tribe should never be ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... hateful, teasty, unpleasant. contentious, angry, 7. cruel, 8. and implacable, Morosi homines, sunt odiosi, torvi, illepidi. contentiosi, iracundi, 7. crudeles, 8. ac implacabiles, (rather Wolves and Lions, than Men) and such as fall out among themselves, hereupon they fight in a Duel, 9. (magis Lupi ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... this great country and other great countries with being unreasonable or unwilling to make concessions. If you look deeply into it you will find always the same cause. It is not mere perversity; it is fear and fear alone that makes men unreasonable and contentious. It is no new thing; it has existed from the foundation of the world. The Prime Minister the other day said, and said quite truly, that the provisions of the Covenant, however admirable, were not in themselves sufficient to secure the peace of the world. He made an appeal, quite rightly, to ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the end for which Christ was born, namely, their salvation from unrighteousness—a class that may be divided into the insipid and the offensive, both regardless of obedience, the former indifferent to, the latter contentious for doctrine. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... friends, and commanded our associates, though without fortune. Does not this declare we have that within us which, when we are united, can still exalt or conquer our destiny? And we—we—alone in the noisy and contentious world with which we strive—we shall turn, after each effort, to our own hearts, and find there a comfort and a shelter. All things will bind us closer and closer to each other. The thought of our past solitude, the hope of our future objects, will ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... back and forth like a sentinel, watching, not too unobtrusively, the possibly future Mrs. Remsen Van Dam, for she expected developments. In the smoking-room Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson indulged in bridge of a concentrated, reflective, and contentious species. As each practiced a different system, their views at the end of every rubber were the delight of their opponents. They had finished their final fiasco, and were standing at the door, exchanging mutual recriminations, when the Tyro ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... against those who neglected to scrape and wash the plainstones forenent their houses, and to denounce, in the strictest terms, the emptying of improper utensils on the same; and this, until the people had grown into the habitude of attending to the rules, gave rise to many pleas, and contentious appeals and bickerings, before the magistrates. Among others summoned before me for default, was one Mrs Fenton, commonly called the Tappit-hen, who kept a small change-house, not of the best repute, being ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... was how it had started, and that was why Judson Green had spent the summer in New York instead of running away to the north woods or the New England shore, as nearly everybody he knew did. Diligently had he sought to win that hundred dollars of the contentious Wainwright; diligently had he ranged from one end of New York to the other, seeking queer people and queer things—seeking anything that might properly be said to constitute adventure. Sometimes a mildly interested and mildly satirical friend accompanied him; oftener he went alone, an earnest ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... The author of the contentious article that appeared in Mechanical Engineering in 1942 under the title "What is Wrong with Kinematics and Mechanisms?" made several pronouncements that were questioned by various readers, but his remarks on the meagerness of the college courses of kinematics and the "curious fact" ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their time is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the "Schola," as one of the loci theologici; still I sympathise with Petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology" that "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity." The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... we contended and believed, a right to the free navigation of the Mississippi, but it was not until after the expiration of twelve years, in 1795, that that right was acknowledged and enjoyed. Further difficulties occurred in the bustling of a contentious world when, at the expiration of eight years more, the United States, sustaining the strength and energy of their character, acquired the Province of Louisiana, with the free navigation of the river from its source to the ocean and a liberal boundary on the western ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... serve to remind us of certain characters and circumstances with which we meet on the voyage of life? Who cannot call to mind many snags—men, rugged, stubborn, and contentious,—snags by all means to be avoided? D'Israeli was the snag of Peel—Russia was the snag of Napoleon—Slavery is the snag ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... dear comrade, Your mission is fulfill'd—but I, more warlike, Myself and this contentious soul of mine, Still on our own campaigning bound, Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here, To fiercer, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... offence were committed in a contentious and spiteful vindication of the privileges of his manours, and a rigorous and relentless prosecution of every man that presumed to violate his game. As he happens to have no estate adjoining equal to his own, his oppressions are often borne without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... successful upon the stage, but the book was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy. "A Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success. Its matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective and brilliant. It was not in vain that Bjoernson had at different times been the director of three theatres. This play has for its theme the ethics of business life, ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... I hardly know of a greater trial of patience than he must have had in consenting to circumcise Timothy. He there shut the window-shutters, and lighted an exhausted lamp, for a time, though he knew the sun was up, to gratify some who had not opened their eyes to the morning. How far from a contentious, ambitious spirit, was he, even with his intense convictions. There are many good people, in all communions, who are longing for the time when all the old walls of separation between true Christians will have as many gates in them, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... and raiment like a shroud: A worse fair face than witchcraft's, passion-proud, With brows blood-flecked behind their bridal wreath And lips that bade the assassin's sword find sheath Deep in the heart whereto love's heart was vowed: A game of close contentious crafts and creeds Played till white England bring black Spain to shame: A son's bright sword and brighter soul, whose deeds High conscience lights for mother's love and fame: Pure gipsy flowers, and poisonous courtly weeds: Such ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and surely there be also, that turn it into vinegar; for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge, is to suppress force and fraud; whereof force is the more pernicious, when it is open, and fraud, when it is close and disguised. Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and taking down hills: so when there appeareth ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... while he exercised an extraordinary fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence, he never became the hero of the great masses of the West; he appealed rather to the more intelligent—to the men of business and of property."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the contentious, self-confident, nationalistic democracy of the interior. He could make no claim to statesmanship. He had held no important legislative or administrative position in his State, and his brief career in Congress was entirely without distinction. He was a man of action, not a theorist, and ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... not like her husband's treatment of her, she refuses to cook for him or to attend to any of her duties, and he gladly sends her back to her father. He, like Solomon of old, agrees that "it is better to dwell alone in the wilderness than with an angry and contentious woman." The father doesn't mind getting her back, because he keeps the original purchase price and will also collect from the next brave that wants to take a chance on her; why should he worry? In a few instances braves have been known to trade ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... record the same complaints about us. They put us down as contentious, ill-tempered faultfinders. But these are the crafty passes of the devil, with which he seeks to overthrow our faith. We answer with Paul: "A little leaven leaveneth the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... but firm in the hour of danger, and respectfully obedient to his officers; he will honour his king, be content with his wages, and do harm to no man. His piety will be ardent but sober, his prayers will be earnest and frequent, but rather in secret than before men; he will not be contentious or disputatious, but rather desirous of instructing others by his example than by his precepts; letting his light so shine before them, in the simplicity of his motives, the uprightness of his actions, in his readiness ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... the one you want! 'A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentions woman are alike!' I'm not contentious, Solomon!" ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... came back to their cheeks and the purpose into their eyes. They laughed once more. Their days were filled with work and cheerfulness. In November Sir Anthony was elected Mayor. Being a practical, hard-headed little man, loved and respected by everybody, he drove a hitherto contentious Town Council into paths of high patriotism like a flock of sheep. And no less energy did Lady Fenimore exhibit in the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... beneath this—in the company of a couple of tatterdemalions worthy of him—sat the giant who had mocked his escape from falling, and as Gonzaga took his seat he heard the fellow's voice, guttural, bottle-thickened and contentious. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Ts'ain has already arrived, With the graceful motion of a silver carp gliding through a screen of rushes, she moves among those who are assembled. On the brow of her somewhat contentious father there rests the shadow of an ill-repressed sorrow; Doubtless the frequently-misjudged Ah-Ping is thinking of his lonely hearth, now that he is for ever parted from that ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of debate: The dread, the irrevocable oath he swore, The immortal seats should ne'er behold her more; And whirled her headlong down, forever driven From bright Olympus and the starry heaven: Thence on the nether world the fury fell, Ordained with man's contentious race to dwell. Full oft the god his son's hard toils bemoaned, Cursed the dire folly, and in secret groaned. —HOMER'S ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... end of the thirteenth century the bishop had been accustomed to delegate the contentious jurisdiction of his diocese to an ecclesiastical judge, taking the name of vicar, or more commonly official ("vicarius generalis officialis"). The court itself became known as the officialite. Trials for heresy, breach of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Apollo, the god of light, who shot forth his arrows, not at first identified with Helios, became the god of divination and poetry, who led the choir of the muses; the goddess of light, Athene, became the contentious goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea, once the symbol of the fruitful power of nature, later, encircled by the Graces, became the type of womanly beauty and charm, to which the strength of man, personified ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... part of your late publication, which is no less an invective against me, than it is a defence of yourself, you have, with sufficient art, insisted on my remarkably contentious, factious,[D] and jealous spirit, which suffers no man, undisturbed, to enjoy his well-earned fame; a circumstance in my character you expected to derive considerable benefit from in the controversy between us. For this point being once gained, every suggestion, every ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[jc][316] In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong Midst a contentious world, striving ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... knights, citizens, and burgesses returned to parliament for that part of the United Kingdom called England and Wales, ought not to be diminished." This motion was designed to get rid of the bill altogether, and it produced a violent and contentious debate. Mr. Sadler, who seconded it, delivered a long, argumentative, and learned speech against the general principles of the whole plan of reform. He was followed by the chancellor of the exchequer, who declared that he was quite sure that the amendment was put with a view ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the advantages of old age, if we contemplate it in another point of view; if we consider it as delivering us from the tyranny of lust and ambition; from the angry and contentious passions; from every inordinate and irrational desire; in a word, as teaching us to retire within ourselves, and look for happiness in our own bosoms. If to these moral benefits naturally resulting ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... other names were announced, to the great mortification of the senators, who felt as if the indignity reflected rather upon themselves than on Marcius. He, for his part, could not bear the affront with any patience. He had always indulged his temper, and had regarded the proud and contentious element of human nature as a sort of nobleness and magnanimity; reason and discipline had not imbued him with that solidity and equanimity which enter so largely into the virtues for the statesman. He had never learned ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... like a thrifty beggar took from each. And when the long autumnal season came To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven, And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes, Then to low sobs and murmurs died away, The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks Lit by the flickering driftwood's ruddy glow, Drew closer to the crane, and under breath To awestruck ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... undutifulnesse to the Kings Majestie to whom we heartily wish, and to his posterity after him, a happy Reigne over these Dominions, Nor from any factious disposition or siding with this or that party whatsoever, Nor from any contentious humour about light or small matters, Nor from any favour to or complyance with Sectaries, against whose cursed opinions and ungodly practises, we have heretofore given ample testimony, and are still obliged by Solemn Covenant to ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... gathering other streams as it goes through wide stretches of country to the sea, it receives greater and more numerous impurities the farther it gets from its source, until, at last, what was, in its rise, a gentle rilling through snows and over whitest stones, roars into the ocean a muddy and contentious river. Men soon long to touch and taste all that they see; savage-like, him whom to-day they deem a god and worship, they on the morrow get an appetite for and kill, to eat and barter. And thus art is degraded, made a thing of carnal desire—a commodity ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, and Bulgaria began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. Today, reforms and democratization keep Bulgaria on a path toward eventual integration into the EU ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... stimulant for drooping ambition—the only infallible remedy for damaged honor and wounded pride. When the scales shall have fallen from our eyes in that happy day, politics will become a delightful profession, the contentious spirit of man will cease from its bickerings, the tongue of woman will settle down into a steady and respectable trot, the golden age of duelling will retreat into the shadowy past until it shall seem contemporary with the half-fabulous ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was recalled, and Fletcher sent out. He was not a sodden imbecile, but he was ill-chosen for his office. He described the New Yorkers of that day as "divided, contentious and impoverished" and immediately began a conflict with them. His attitude may be judged from a passage in his remarks to the assembly soon afterward: "There never was an amendment desired by the council board but what was rejected. It is a sign of a stubborn ill-temper.... ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... commotion their minds grew more and more inflamed, exasperated, and contentious. And as an old hereditary hatred burned in them against the town of Mascalico, on the opposite bank of the river, Giacobbe said venomously, in a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... declares, has been uncertain and unfruitful, and does not advance a step, while the mechanic arts grow daily more perfect; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking in content, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledge must abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing nature to answer his questions. The seeker after fruitful knowledge must increase ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... his friends would really do with me, if they had me in their power, I cannot say, but they express in their looks and words nothing which I can fairly interpret to proceed from ill-will. I have been lately not so contentious or abusive as formerly, no more than I have flattered them, and my appearance among them is from mere curiosity, and to amuse you by my recitals more than ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... but feeling in a contentious mood, prolonged the discussion by leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but, prescient of my argument, Mr. Masthead avoided refutation by hastily adjourning the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the details of the policy that I had ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... followed his fortunes to Rome and there became a leader of the metropolitan bar. He saw gallant military service in Spain and in Greece, commanded an army, held all the curule offices of state and ended a contentious life in the Senate denouncing Carthage and the degeneracy of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... every side attractive, and we had everything to say about the sort of thing a paper like the Beacon would want. To give it what it would want and to give it nothing else was not doubtless an inspiring, but it was a perfectly respectable task, especially for a man with an appealing bride and a contentious mother-in-law. I thought Lambert's first letters as charming as the type allowed, though I won't deny that in spite of my sense of the importance of concessions I was just a trifle disconcerted at the way he had caught the tone. The tone was of course to be caught, but need it have ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Kingdom of Lesotho upon independence from the UK in 1966. King MOSHOESHOE was exiled in 1990. Constitutional government was restored in 1993 after 23 years of military rule. In 1998, violent protests and a military mutiny following a contentious election prompted a brief but bloody South African military intervention. Constitutional reforms have since restored political stability; peaceful parliamentary elections were ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... descent of this high spirit on to our planet. If the human race had earnestly centred upon that instead of losing itself in vain dreams of vicarious sacrifices and imaginary falls, with all the mystical and contentious philosophy which has centred round the subject, how very different the level of human culture and happiness would be to-day! Such theories, with their absolute want of reason or morality, have been the main cause why the best ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Compertorum.' There are also reports from private persons, private entreaties for enquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations, and other similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive to be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious persons compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious light on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders which accompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that although ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... lacking independence.' The germ of this great movement towards mental freedom was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in them, and there was neither poet nor poem fit to be compared ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... danger of corruption cannot be denied; but what prevention can be found? The present manners of the nation would deride authority; and, therefore, nothing is left but that every writer should criticise himself. All hopes of new literary institutions were quickly suppressed by the contentious turbulence of king James's reign; and Roscommon, foreseeing that some violent concussion of the state was at hand, purposed to retire to Rome, alleging, that "it was best to sit near the chimney ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... is in the lists Contentious with the elements, whose dower First sprang him; for swift vultures to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. He had seen many years of service in the Continental Congress which he first entered in 1776. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, in whose sessions he showed a contentious temper, and in the end refused to subscribe to the new Constitution. In the convention debates he had strongly declared himself "against letting the heads of the departments, particularly of finance, have anything to do with business ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will not require many words to prove, that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... over, I soon grew impatient to be doing something. There would be no movement in cattle before the following spring, and a winter of idleness was not to my liking. Buffalo hunting had lost its charm with me, the contentious savages were jealous of any intrusion on their old hunting grounds, and, having met them on numerous occasions during the past eighteen months, I had no further desire to cultivate their acquaintance. I still owned my horse, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams |
